Happy New Year!!

I declare this the Year Of The Injury. Yesterday while giving poor Jasper at the shelter his nighttime frozen Kong before leaving for the day, he tried to make a break for it by throwing all of his 50+ lbs at me as I was backing out of his kennel door. I was unprepared for this, as Jasper generally sits nicely when I tell him I’m coming in his kennel – because he knows that it means I’m taking him for a super walk. But Jasper is no dummy, and he’s figured out that the Kong means he’s spending the night alone at the shelter so he decided to escape. And in the process of fending him off, somehow one of my fingernails got torn mostly off. As in off my finger where it’s supposed to be. BIG [email protected]&%@! OUCH!!

Oops.

My New Year’s Resolution is to find Jasper a home – not only because he needs one so badly, but also because I think it will negate the Year of The Injury. He is actually a very nice dog; when we go for walks, he is so polite on his lead and stays in a nice heel. I taught him to drop his ball and sit patiently for the next throw when we play in the pen, and to jump over stuff, and he’s a lovely jogging partner too, for short sprints. He’s so much calmer when he’s not freaking out about being left in the kennels, not that I blame him. I think he’ll make someone a wicked sport dog … Surely someone out there needs an agility Lab?

My other New Year’s Resolution was to exercise more patience with my dogs. TWooie has already blown this one to hell when, at 3AM this morning, he insisted – INSISTED – that he needed to go outside to potty. It was imperative that he go, he said. And while there are few things I dislike more than being woken up in the middle of the night, I exercised some patience and crawled out of my warm bed to let TWooie outside in the frigid night to go potty.

The Food Lady had a sleeping, but I ruined it.

When after a couple of minutes The TWoo did not reappear, I softly called his name. When after a few more moments he was still MIA, I stepped out onto the snow covered porch and called him again. By the time I was stomping around in the 3:30AM snow in my pajamas bearing, a flashlight, hissing murder at him, all my patience had been exercised. I saw his shadow go skittering briefly through my flashlight beam and eventually figured out that he was not going potty, he was hunting rats. And not only was he hunting rats under the guise of a desperate potty break, he was doing it at full speed to avoid ME.

And of course, this upset the turkeys, who started honking and beeping in alarm. Can’t even blame this one on the neighbours!

When I am an old man dog, I shall retell the tale of the Great Sleep Interruption of ’11.

The good news is, there is no more super irritating rooster! On New Year’s Eve, I spied my neighbours’ friend out there catching the Asshole Rooster, who became New Year’s Day stew. But mysteriously, they acquired a different rooster … different crowing, no less annoying. I am plagued with roosters not of my making!! But the reason they ate the first rooster was because we had a very pleasant chat about birds keeping people up at night, and they agreed that they too hated the rooster. The turkeys have been reasonably quiet the last few nights, so I think it’s going to work out just fine, until we build them a new house and enclosure.

After that disaster of a night’s sleep, I stayed in bed for a very long time this morning before finally taking the mutts out for a good hard run. It’s still stinkin’ cold outside, but it’s just beautiful with the sun and the light dusting of crunchy snow.

On New Year’s Eve we went for a dog walk with Jen of Mambo Mutts and her dogs out in the wilds of Pitt Meadows. It was very beautiful, but I didn’t really take many photos at all. I should have.

So I tried to take lots this morning to make up for it. I even tried sneaking up on a heron for you all, but you can’t sneak up on a heron in crunchy snow. This was the closest I got before he took off.

Although it may have had something to do with the hunting duo too, who don’t believe in sneaking up on anything. They prefer a full fledged attack.

Little animals should be honoured to have me eat them. Harumph.

I concur, brother.

Hey, is that a rabbit?

(please to notice Skinny TWoo, with a waist and everything)

Did you say rabbit??

Wondertwins! Activate Deaf To Food Lady’s Calls Sequence!

The collies preferred to play some Dumbball. Or more correctly, Piper preferred Tweed to drop the Dumbball so someone else could play too.

What?

Dexter preferred … oh hell, everything is awesome when you’re Dexter.

I’m Dexter! And everything is awesome!

Like, REALLY awesome!

I’m coming over there, in case you’re going to do something awesome.

Ooooh, I know! I’ll hide here and let something awesome come to me!

You know he’s insane, right?

Did you say awesome?

What’s awesome is that it’s my turn to wake the Food Lady up tonight.

(insert scary movie music here)

Hopefully you enjoyed today’s selection of sunny snow photos. I’ m now going to go spend some time with Kenny V. and his new mistress, Miss Steamy. I picked up a cheapie steam mop at Home Depot the other day and hot damn! but it does a good job of cleaning the laminate. It’s fast, it’s easy, its chemical free and it doesn’t leave any streaks. I’m sold! Now, I just need that tiny, wall climbing cobweb eating monkey …

I didn’t get the shark – I have the post-Christmas brokes! I bought a super cheapo version (I anticipate the handle breaking any time now) but it’s doing a really good job at keeping my laminate not looking like the floor of the henhouse. I can only imagine an expensive version would do a really stellar job!

Ouch! I’m sure Jasper was quite sorry. He is so cute. And I love labs. However, no room at the inn.

My husband got “us” a nice steam mop for Christmas. I think the look on my face was what led to him to say (a couple of days later) that it was time to get a weekly housekeeping service. I’m interviewing starting tomorrow, and soon… Bliss!

So sorry about the finger, :( I hope you recover soon from that though I know it’s going to be sore. Jasper is really cute, I’m not madly in love with labradors, but I really fall in love when they are chocolate, so cute. :) I have tweeted his ad in Petfinder, unfortunately that’s the only thing I can do, I hope it helps. :(

I would’ve killed Twooie, I’m not sure how you manage to have so much patience with him. He looks very happy and full of confidence since it’s living with you, but God he can be evil.

And Dexter is really awesome, he’s such a handsome dog, I’m sorry but I have a weakness for him and Tweed.

The photos by the way are terrific, they all look fantastic in the snow and they look like they were all having a great time in the snow.

I have one word for you, well, two actually – long line. For when one of the evil duo play the potty-break routine. I swear Woo has gotten more “crafty” looking since Twooie joined the family. Or maybe it is just since he lost his flamboyance. But you can see the wheels turning in his head even when he is looking at the camera. Great shots, by the way.

As an aside, do all the dogs at the shelter get frozen kongs at night? Or just certain dogs for whatever reason. If they all do, you must work at a great shelter. Ditto even if only a few do since I assume that means they (or you) are paying attention to individual dogs and their needs. I, for one would enjoy hearing more shelter stories. Great picture of Jasper.